One presumed dead after scalloper sinks off P'town

Coast Guard and state police divers are searching for the body of one of two fishermen whose 40-foot scallop boat sank off the coast of Cape Cod.

By HEATHER WYSOCKI

capecodtimes.com

By HEATHER WYSOCKI

Posted Nov. 18, 2012 at 4:10 PM
Updated Nov 18, 2012 at 9:29 PM

By HEATHER WYSOCKI

Posted Nov. 18, 2012 at 4:10 PM
Updated Nov 18, 2012 at 9:29 PM

» Social News

PROVINCETOWN – U.S. Coast Guard vessels and state police divers worked into the night Sunday searching for the body of a fisherman about 2 miles off Race Point after the vessel he was on began capsizing around 11:30 a.m.

Coast Guard Station Woods Hole received a call from the lobster boat Glutton about another boat, Twin Lights, capsizing after becoming tangled in fishing gear, Chief John Harker of the Coast Guard station in Provincetown said.

Fishermen aboard the Glutton were able to rescue one crew member, Harker said. But another was still below decks on the scalloping boat when it sank, state police Trooper Todd Nolan said.

The Twin Lights is captained by Jean Frottier, 69, of Wellfleet.

Air Station Cape Cod sent a helicopter and a Falcon jet to the area to search for the man, Harker said. In addition, two Coast Guard cutters, the Spencer and the Grand Isle, and Massachusetts State Police divers assisted in the search.

After several hours of searching, the mission transformed from one of rescue into one of recovery, Nolan said Sunday afternoon. The time the man would have been in the 50-degree water and the depth where the boat sank, around 192 feet, contributed to that decision, he added.

Neither Harker nor Nolan would provide the names of either the rescued fisherman or the man assumed to have gone down with the ship.

But on Sunday night, the close-knit community of MacMillan Pier boat owners was already mourning the loss of one of its own.

“I'm really devastated about it. I'm heartbroken,” fisherman David Dutra said of the capsizing and the possible death of Frottier.

Rumors of the Twin Lights' capsizing, and the fact that Frottier was likely still aboard when it happened, began to spread around midday, Dutra said.

“It's a small community now, and word passes fast,” he said.

And in that community Frottier was a legend known by most boat owners.

“I just know that we've lost one of our senior captains, and it breaks my heart,” Dutra said.

Aubrey Gordon of Provincetown, a firefighter and charter fishing boat captain, said his cousin Eric Rego was the crew member rescued by the Glutton.

“I asked him if he was OK and he said he was OK under the circumstances,” Gordon said of Rego, to whom he spoke by phone while Rego was still aboard the Glutton.

Rego and Frottier were “pretty religiously” the only two people aboard the Twin Lights, Gordon said, “just captain and mate.”

While on a charter trip on his boat, the Good2Go, Gordon heard the Coast Guard call for a search around 12:30 p.m. and he headed out to help, he said.

Several other private fishing boats also headed out, he said.

“We all know each other on the pier,” he explained.

Frottier is a longtime lobsterman, fisherman and scalloper who has publicly criticized the National Marine Fisheries Service and the New England Fishery Management Council for their fishing restrictions and attempts to manage overfishing.

“So-called fisheries management has always been a scandal, and the inevitable result is today becoming impossible to hide,” he wrote in a letter to the editor published in the Times in April.

A message left at a phone number listed for Frottier was not returned Sunday.

The Twin Lights, a 40-foot commercial fishing vessel, was built in 1985 and is based out of Provincetown, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration records state.